The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday featuring Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn‘s “Wastebook 2012.”
The highlights:
The annual list of 100 of the most wasteful projects and redundancies includes everything from a $300,000 initiative to market caviar, $516,000 to create a video game simulating a high school prom night, a government funded study to find out if golfers perform better when they imagine a bigger hole, $947,000 spent on studying what food people could eat on Mars, and part of a $325,000 grant spent on a robotic squirrel.
Coburn also points out tax loopholes for professional sports that list themselves as non-profit organizations, pointing out that that status affords the NFL, NHL, and PGA receive $89.9 million in de facto government subsidies. The report also delves into the mismanagement of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or food stamps — which has resulted in $4.5 billion spent on things like Starbucks, alcohol, guns, and junk food.